July 9, 2025:
Britain has developed a directed energy weapon that works. The full name is Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon or RFDEW. With a one kilometer range, this system also uses Electronic Warfare or EW to try and jam drone control signals. For the roves that get past that, REDEW uses electronic beams that disable the drone’s electronics, causing it to crash.
This follows closely with a similar Israeli system. The Israeli system uses lasers to intercept mortar shells, drones and rockets. Testing under combat conditions proved the system worked.
Laser systems like this have been in development elsewhere for a long time, but so far no one has been able to develop a laser with the range and destructive power to perform like the new Israeli system. This new weapon was Light Shield and complements the existing Iron Dome system that uses missiles and an innovative radar/software system that ignores ballistic, rockets or mortar shells whose trajectory would mean hitting unoccupied land where there will be no injuries or serious damage. Most objects fired at Israel end up landing in unoccupied areas and the few objects that are dangerous are intercepted by missiles. This has proved very effective.
Light Shield is described as using a solid-state electric laser at an effective range of 5,000 meters. This costs a few dollars’ worth of electricity per shot. A diesel generator capacitor system could fire once every few seconds for as long as power was available. Laser Dome combines multiple laser beams aimed at a single target to obtain a useful amount of laser power at longer ranges. Fire control systems for quickly, accurately and repeatedly aiming a laser have already been developed. The main problem is obtaining a sufficient burn of laser beam-created heat at longer ranges to do enough damage to bring down or destroy the incoming drone or warhead.
Israel believes Light Shield has sufficient burn power but realistic tests are needed to prove it. If Light Shield works, several individual systems could operate with each Iron Dome battery to take down targets the laser can reach rather than use the $70,000 missiles. Iron Dome takes care of longer-range targets. This would make Iron Dome a lot cheaper to operate and more effective against mass attacks when dozens of rockets are fired at the same target in a short time.
Some of the tech Light Shield uses has already been used in other laser weapons. The best example of this is the U.S. Army Compact Laser Weapon System/CLWS which is capable of handling drones. CLWS is a 2.2 ton laser weapon light enough to mount on helicopters or hummers and can destroy small drones up to 2,000 meters away, while it can disable or destroy the sensors (vidcams) on a drone up to 7,000 meters away. The CLWS fire control system will automatically track and keep the laser firing on a selected target. It can take up to 15 seconds of laser fire to bring down a drone or destroy its camera. This is the tech that Laser Dome has improved enough to destroy drones with both one shot and at longer ranges.
Another example is a U.S. Navy system already installed on a growing number of warships. In 2013 the navy announced that it had developed a laser technology capable of being useful in combat. This was not a sudden development but has been going on for most of the previous decade. In 2010 the navy successfully tested this new laser weapon, which is actually six solid-state lasers acting in unison, to destroy a small drone. That was the seventh time the navy laser had destroyed a drone. But the Laser Weapon System/LaWS was not yet powerful enough to do this at the range, and power level, required to cripple the most dangerous targets, which are missiles and small boats. The manufacturer convinced the navy that it was just a matter of tweaking the technology to get the needed effectiveness. In 2013 another test was run, under more realistic conditions. LaWS worked, knocking down a larger drone at a longer range. At that point, the navy said it planned to install the system in a warship within the year for even more realistic testing. Those tests took place in 2014 and were successful enough to install LaWS on warships to be used to deliver warnings at low power rather than its full strength.
The LaWS laser cannon was mounted on a KINETO Tracking Mount, which is similar, but larger and more accurate, than the mount used by the Phalanx Close-In Weapons System/CIWS. The navy laser weapon tests used the radar and tracking system of the CIWS. Back in 2009 CIWS was upgraded so that its sensors could detect speedboats, small aircraft, and naval mines. This was crucial because knocking down drones is not something that the navy needs help with. But the ability to do enough damage to disable boats or missiles that are over two kilometers distant meant the LaWS was worth mounting on a warship.
LaWS was able to disable a ScanEagle drone, destroy an RPG rocket and burn out the outboard engine of a speed boat. LaWS also proved useful in detecting small boats or aerial objects at night and in bad weather. LaWS worked despite mist and light sandstorms. But in heavier sandstorms performance was much reduced. LaWS uses less than a dollars’ worth of power use and is supplied by a diesel generator separate from the ship power supply. LaWS was never deployed fleet-wide, in part because of a more effective High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance/HELIOS system. This weapon can destroy or disable drones and small boats at ranges of up to eight kilometers. HELIOS is being installed on a growing number of American warships.